As so many upcoming freshman girls are, I was extremely excited to decorate my dorm room. It was, perhaps, the thing I thought most about the summer before I arrived at college. But decorating your dorm room exactly as you see in the movies, or in sorority houses on TV shows, or in magazines, I realized, is really quite expensive. Not to mention the fact that many dorm rooms do not let you put nails/tacks in the walls. So really, how can you achieve that perfectly coordinates, colorful, wonderful dorm room that so many freshman girls dream of? The answer is you can’t - at least, not really. No matter how much you want to, it is unreasonable to buy everything cute that you see in movies or magazines, but you can get a really similar room for a much more reasonable cost, and with much more reasonable merchandise. Here are just a few things you can do to liven up the walls of your dorm room without violating the rules of your dorm and without spending your entire budget on wall decorations.
1. Mat boards - mat boards are the things usually used around a picture but before the frame. They are basically just cardboard and come in all sorts of shapes and colors. They are far less expensive than buying actual frames, but perhaps the best aspect of mat boards is that they weigh way less than actual picture frames. This way, you can essentially frame pictures without having to deal with the hazard of having to find a way to hang the heavy things on your wall - mat boards can easily be hung up with tape, which definitely does not violate most dorm rules. And they allow you to frame pictures but spend less money, avoiding the very casual and unplanned look that just plain pictures taped to the wall often create.
2. Wall decals - Again, these can be bought at very inexpensive prices, especially if you order them online from someplace like Amazon. You can find them in all sorts of shapes, colors, and sizes, but basically they’re all giant stickers you can stick on your walls. They can definitely liven up a room, even a bathroom or kitchen, and you can almost always find a decal of what you’re looking for, whether that be your school mascot or just some pretty flowers. The larger the decal the more expensive, but you can spend a minimal amount of money (about $20) to get a pretty large one that will decorate most of, if not all, of a decent sized wall. They’re also easily removable and some are reusable, so you shouldn’t get in trouble for ruining your dorm room walls.
3. Christmas lights - I definitely did not realize how inexpensive Christmas lights actually are, but you can get a box of about 200 for like $3. It didn’t occur to me to buy ours until at least half way through my freshman year, but they frame windows really nicely or can be used to decorate walls and, at least in my opinion, do not have to be taken down after Christmas. They look really cool in dorm rooms at night with the lights turned out, and they also come in a multitude of colors, so if you’re looking to liven up your room with colors, you can always get purple lights, or orange lights, or red, or whatever other color you want. They’re also pretty easy to get to stay up - duct tape (which you can also buy in a multitude of colors to match your wall) or packing tape work really well and generally do not violate dorm rules.
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